President Donald Trump's re-election campaign has told television stations their licenses could be in jeopardy if they do not stop showing what the campaign called a "patently false and misleading" ad from a Democratic Super PAC, Broadcasting + Cable has reported.
The ad, from the Priorities USA (PUSA) Action Fund, includes audio of Trump saying "the coronavirus" – and then, with just a slight pause – a separate clip saying "this is their new hoax."
As Broadcasting + Cable pointed out, the hoax reference the president was referring to was Democrats saying he was politicizing the coronavirus, not the outbreak itself.
Among the other audio clips are Trump saying "one day, it's like a miracle, it will disappear," and "we really think we've done a great job in keeping it down to a minimum," while a graph shows coronavisus cases continually escalating.
In its letter to stations, the campaign said if they do not immediately stop broadcasting the ad, then the campaign "will have no choice but to pursue all legal remedies available to it in law and in equity; we will not stand idly by and allow you to broadcast false, deceptive, and misleading information concerning President's Trump's healthcare positions without consequence."
The letter added, failure to remove the ad might be "probative of an underlying abdication of licensee responsibility that could put your station's license in jeopardy."
Priorities USA chairman Guy Cecil tweeted the letter from the Trump campaign has given a big boost to its ad, with "almost 11 million views just off of this tweet [and] Even more from other pl atforms and posts."
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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